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What Do Cyber Investigations And A Wedding Website Have In Common? This Dynamic Entrepreneur

Woody applied the lessons he learned from his other companies to the bridal market, and the results have been truly impressive. mywedding.com is now the third largest wedding site in the world, recently surpassing Brides.com, and is EBITDA positive.

Lessons For Success

Having successfully navigated the process many times, I asked Woody to share the most important things he has learned as an entrepreneur. Here are his top tips:

1. Sell First.

“The number one problem that separates the companies that survive from the ones that don’t is the sales team. If you don’t have someone selling and making you money, you will not survive. Even if you’re product isn’t that great or isn’t built yet, that isn’t an excuse not to sell. I, myself, was the first national sales person at mywedding.com, meaning that we built up our local sales team and I went out to figure out what we needed to sell nationally. I asked what people were willing to buy and took that back and, truth be told, I actually sold it even though we hadn’t built it yet. It’s really much easier to have something created if you already have people willing to pay for it!”

2. Product development must be about sales.

Woody urges entrepreneurs to focus all of their development dollars on improvements that will drive sales. “We focused all of our efforts on the revenue-generating components of the product. In other words, build something to sell. That was all we did for 2 ½ years. We bought a company that had three products. By the end of the second year, we were selling 14 separate products to advertisers, from simple banners throughout the site to dedicated emails.” Woody explains: “We did this because national advertisers expect a multi-line purchase order. They want to create a holistic experience that will give them the highest return on their investment.” When mywedding.com expanded its offerings to meet this need, the advertisers got on board. Today, national ads make up more than 1/3 of the site’s revenue.

3. User experience matters, but it can wait.

In the last year, the company had five major releases to improve the user experience, all with great results: “Traffic is up and time on site has quadrupled since we’ve launched inspirational segments, which implies that visitors are sticking with us and coming back more often.”

The company has many visitor-focused improvements in the pipeline too, but Woody is glad he prioritized salable products. “I know that it might sound contrary to what people will read elsewhere — you know, ‘if you focus on the user, the money will come.’ And that’s not untrue. But when it comes to building a great product and a great company, everything is important, but the order of operations will determine your success.” If you do not generate sales, no matter how great the rest of your efforts, you will run out of gas before you succeed.

4. A good sales team needs two very different types.

“When it comes to building a great sales team you need two personalities: Someone who can inspire and manage the team; and someone who can manage the fulfillment and ongoing maintenance of the project.”

“The first person is someone who’s the coach and the coach is teaching soft and hard skills. Sales is a process, and a very methodical process; it hasn’t really changed since the beginning of time. You need someone to understand that piece of it. You need someone who can motivate a person who’s told ‘no’ nine out of ten times, or maybe 99 times out of 100 times and still not get discouraged. That person shouldn’t have to also deal with fulfillment.”

“The second person needs to be someone you can trust to do all of the little things. That’s especially important on larger sales with multiple line items. You need someone who’s able to manage that detail. You need to make sure that come renewal time, they’re not only going to renew, but they’re going to spend more.”

5. Trust your team.

Woody noted that in order to grow, leaders must hire great people and create a structure built for scale. “They have to surround themselves with people who own their piece. You don’t triple or quadruple revenue in just a few years if you don’t have people you can trust to go do what they’re supposed to be doing. That trust enables the person who started the company to go out and say, ‘How do we make it even bigger? What do we create next?’”

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